


Dematerialize - Then You're Nothing

by Bawgdan



Category: Gangsta. (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Depression, Drabble, F/M, Romance, Short One Shot, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25063234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bawgdan/pseuds/Bawgdan
Summary: Losing enough of yourself will alter your personality and your understanding of time.Alex misplaces important names behind her ears, can't match the time of day with the dates on the calendar, hides the essentials of living in the back pocket of her jeans and loses them in the slow tumble of the dryer. The lint tray is full with the fuzzy crumbs of her anxiety.
Relationships: Alex Benedetto/Nicolas Brown
Comments: 21
Kudos: 72





	Dematerialize - Then You're Nothing

**_“...it all remained unreadable for him, though reading, he felt, was not a natural thing and should not be done to people. In general, people were not road maps. People were not hieroglyphs or books. They were not stories. A person was a collection of accidents. A person was an infinite pile of rocks with things growing underneath.”~ Lorrie Moore_ **

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Alex loses parts of herself around the apartment. She has one sock on her foot, but can't find it's mate. _I must really be a lost cause_ —she thinks to herself. It should be easy to find things in such a compact space. She flips over the cushions on the couch, under Worick's mattress, in the cabinets (she had misplaced her nail polish there once).

Sometimes she can't remember her birthday. _How old am I?_ She scratches at her scalp, loosening her ponytail. When her armpits start to sting, she stops looking. She grabs a cola from the fridge and sprawls on the couch. Alex pops it open, the fizz trickles down the side of the red can. She takes a swig then lays down on her back. It's not as strong as the cola in a glass bottle, but it will have to do. She balances the wet can on her stomach and stares at the popcorn ceiling. A crack runs through a brown spot of water damage. 

Alex depresses into the couch for hours. Not touching the cola again. She slides her hands under the band of Worick's too large sweatpants. What she feels she wouldn't classify as sorrow. Sadness is a transient feeling for her. It comes and goes. She couldn't possibly be empty. There would be no need to fill the wall with neon colored sticky notes to remind herself to do simple things—she feels this permanent sense of halfness. Feeling numb is regressive. She feels too intensely. Feeling so much exerts the energy she reserves for showering and feeding herself. Lifting her arm, shaking the buzzing feeling of bees under her skin, she leans over the couch to sit the cola on the floor but she ends up tipping it over. It gets everywhere and the pool widens. Alex watches the fizzy contents stretch under the couch with indifference. She sits the can up right. Her fingers are sticky now.

She can't bring herself to care. The floor is a mess but the urgency to do anything about it... _she waits_...it never comes. Alex sinks back into the couch and continues to stare at the ceiling for thirty more minutes. She can't remember how old she is. A sticky puddle can wait a little longer.

A teacher had told her once that she could be whoever and whatever she wanted to be. Of course that isn't true. To make something good of yourself, somebody has to believe in you. A somebody with access to things not readily available for little people like her. 

_What do you want to be when you grow up, Alex?_

**This** isn't how she envisioned herself. She hadn't envisioned anything, but she can't even remember what day it is. She is the unreliable narrator of her own story. She thinks about her brother. Her stomach twists.

Nicolas steps through the front door. Alex can feel the look on his face. Nicolas only has three distinct expressions. She sees it clearly behind her eyelids. His mouth pressed into a hard line. A wrinkle at the corner of his nose. He stands there for a moment, observing the chaotic state she had spiraled into. She was a mildly content person this morning. 

He navigates through his routine first. Putting away his jacket and his keys in the same spot on the small wooden table. The one leg supported by magazines wiggles when he drops his watch next to his keys. Alex listens to him move around the apartment. He opens a drawer and closes it. Then he is kneeling in front of the couch, absorbing the mess that hadn't dried to sludge on the floor into a dish towel. Alex opens her eyes and watches the top of his head and the motion of his shoulders. 

_He's cleaning up parts of me._ Alex muses. At that moment, as though coming in contact with her mess had given him access to her troubled brain, Nicolas glares at her. The lines under his eyes give him an unnecessary layer of darkness. He breathes through his nose heavily before standing. His shoes make a squishing sound against the sticky floor.

Nicolas comes back to the couch and stands over her. Alex tilts her chin up. The back of her neck hurts from laying awkward on the arm of the couch. Unlike Worick, Nicolas's thoughts aren't readable. He reaches for her arm and gives her a slight pull. Alex sits up, not entirely brought back to life. She swims through her fog of purgatory. Tomorrow will be a better day. He takes both of her hands and pulls Alex onto her feet. She doesn't communicate it with him but he figures out that if he lets some part of her body go she will end up prone again. Nicolas guides her into the bathroom. His hands are dry and rough. Her fingers are slick with sweat and cola. He squeezes her fingers, their skin sticks together. Alex hears her pulse in her ears. 

He runs bath water, still holding her hand. Alex feels the heaviness of teeth in her mouth and the space her eyeballs take up in her head. Nicolas stops leaning over the tub and turns to her. Without warning, not that she has the mental capacity to care (she is used to men touching her without asking), he slides Worick's t-shirt over her head. He does it without perverted intimacy. When he bends down to pull off the sweatpants, his eyes don't roam. He waits for her to step her feet out of the pants. She rests a hand on his broad shoulders. The itchy red panties Worick had given her got stuck between her toes. Nicolas lifts her foot and removes all the fabric heavy with her sweat.

He comes back up, he eyes on hers and says, in his harsh, punctuated way of speaking, "You. Smell. Bad."

"I feel bad." Alex mumbles, barely moving her lips. She must smell awful if it compels him to speak. Nicolas rarely speaks. Only when he has to. He nods for her to step into the warm water, not letting go.

Alex sinks into the loud rush of water. When he does severe the contact of their hands, she falls against the back of the tub, submerging almost completely. She brings her knees to her chest and stares at the yawning faucet.

Nicolas unzips his pants. Alex doesn't flinch. He undresses himself with the same methodical efficiency. Worick says when Nicolas wants to be, he's a careful person. First his legs come into her view and he sits in the water with her. He turns off the faucet and plunges them into radio silence. His body is covered in scars. Alex thinks she looks the same on the inside. 

"Where is the rest of me?" She asks him. He doesn't respond. The tiny tub manages to fit around them. Nicolas grabs a bar of soap from its dish and picks her hand from under the water. He begins rubbing the soap into her skin until the foamy suds consume their fingers. 

Maybe tomorrow she will remember her age.

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**Author's Note:**

> It be like that sometimes.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I'm a professional sad person.


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